The Shocking Amount of Water That Goes Into an 8-oz. Steak

With California facing a drought that’s sparkedunprecedented restrictions on water usage across the state, a new Buzzfeed video asks an important question: how much water actually go into one 8-oz. steak?

The answer will alarm you. The video starts broadly — a single beef cattle eats 451 gallons worth of water in its feed each day. Then there’s 5 gallons a day of drinking and cleaning water.

That ads up to 499,021 gallons over the course of its lifetime. Divide that by the average number of pieces of 8-ounce steak that come from the average cattle, and you have a very startling figure that might make you think twice before ordering another steak.